I read with dis­gust the re­port con­cern­ing six-year-old Er­ic Git­tens, who was killed by a fall­en con­crete ta­ble top at Rex Tur­tle Beach Ho­tel, To­ba­go. The al­le­ga­tion that the child was wit­nessed jump­ing on the ta­ble and some of the on­line com­ments ac­cus­ing his par­ents of not pro­vid­ing enough child su­per­vi­sion left me see­ing red. What dif­fer­ence does it make whether Er­ic was climb­ing, jump­ing or sit­ting at the ta­ble when it fell on him? The fact is that any­where that of­fers a place for the pub­lic to so­cialise has a du­ty of care to en­sure that their cus­tomers are safe when util­is­ing their fa­cil­i­ties.

This con­crete ta­ble should not on­ly have had a prop­er­ly se­cured top but pos­si­bly should al­so have been bolt­ed to the ground to en­sure that there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of an ac­ci­dent, es­pe­cial­ly when the fa­cil­i­ty is one that is be­ing vis­it­ed by chil­dren.Every­one is say­ing how sad the in­ci­dent is. But this is just the usu­al way for peo­ple to say we feel your pain now but to­mor­row an­oth­er more in­ter­est­ing sto­ry will take your place. This fam­i­ly is left to strug­gle with the re­al­i­ty that their ba­by will nev­er be with them again, they will nev­er hear his gig­gles, see his mis­chie­vous face, hear his laugh­ter of de­light and feel the soft­ness of his kiss­es. Some­how our emp­ty plat­i­tudes and "sor­ry" do not cap­ture the depth of the loss that has oc­curred here.

When you have cus­tomers in your fa­cil­i­ties, you owe them a safe en­vi­ron­ment, safe food and qual­i­ty ser­vice. It is not OK for ser­vice providers to con­tin­ue with the lack­adaisi­cal, un­car­ing at­ti­tude to which we have be­come so ac­cus­tomed.

SPR

St Joseph